Quotes About Books

I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture - I'd write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be.

Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.

With my childhood, it's a wonder I'm not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

Also, most people read fiction as an escape - and I wonder whether my books aren't a bit too grounded in reality to reach the widest possible audience.

The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.

I'm not over-enamored of complicated books, and wonder if it's more for the author's ego than anything else?

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill.

I sometimes look at my bookshelves today and wonder which volumes my sons will treasure in twenty or thirty years. Which should I be saving for them? Which will fade with time?

Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

My parents were wonderful people, but there were terrible rows between them, and at times I found the atmosphere at home unbearable. The Arthur Ransome books gave me an alternative childhood and the tools to escape.

I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

'Finnegans Wake,' 'Alice and Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' live on my bedside table back home in London.

There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

The first pages of any book I remember reading, in Pinner Wood primary school, were from The Beacon Readers: stories of Farmer Giles, Rover the Dog, Old Lob the shepherd and Mrs Cuddy the Cow. I was very fond of Mrs Cuddy.

Pepys was such a meticulous person that he had little wooden blocks to make all the books on his shelves the same height.

Artemis women often have difficult childhoods. She's the kid who seeks comfort in the woods, or animals, or books. If trapped in an authoritarian family, she blends in to get by - but keeps a fierce autonomy inside her head and heart, looking to the day she breaks free.

I have a terrific relationship with Woody and realize it's full of dramatic overtones, but it's really quite simple. It revolves around conversations, film talk, sports talk, books, and art.

I'm an imperfect person. I've let anger, jealousy, all the emotions, get the best of me. If I go into books, word by word, little by little, they help re-center and re-ground me and put me on the right path. Life is a journey. I'm very focused on the things I do and have learned not to be pressured.

I don't really have a lot of hobbies. I listen to a lot of spoken word. I get books on tape.

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.

My son likes Doctor Seuss books, but they're right tongue twisters. You get to certain bits and you stumble your words and it makes you feel like an idiot.